by Scott Martin, USA TODAY, @scottysmartin

by Scott Martin, USA TODAY, @scottysmartin

SAN FRANCISCO - Google and Microsoft have been staging a new war of words over office business.

On Friday, Google is landing the latest punch. It's announcing that Weather Channel parent The Weather Company is going Google. The company's 1,200 employees are now using Google's Apps version of Office that resides remotely in the cloud. The Weather Company CIO Bryson Koehler says Google's office services such as Gmail, Chat, Google+, Drive and Docs are better woven together online. "We use Hangouts all the time," he says of the videoconferencing feature.

The contract win is sure to add fuel to a simmering rivalry. On April Fools' Day, Google aimed a prank at Microsoft's Blue self-improvement initiative, glibly saying it was turning Gmail blue. Literally. Down to the color of the fonts. Microsoft Blue is a recent company meme to improve its Windows 8 tablets and software.

Behind the humor, however, is a blistering battle that continues to play out in workplaces across the U.S.

Google and Microsoft are duking it out over contracts to supply offices with productivity software such as the software giant's Office and Office 365 and the online advertising leader's office Apps.

There's increased tension between Microsoft and Google because the software giant is trying to grow revenue by driving more people to office services in the cloud, but Google is getting in the way.

"They both throw rocks at each other," says Gartner analyst Tom Austin. "This is great because for the first time in 20 years we have a choice. Google is keeping Microsoft honest. Before it was like, 'Do you want Microsoft or Microsoft?' "

The two are also having fisticuffs over collaboration, messaging and video-calling services aimed at the office crowd. Google+ and its Hangouts videoconferences are positioned against Microsoft's Yammer, Skype, Lync and SharePoint.

"Google Hangouts allows you to put clown faces on other participants while they are talking. That's an interesting play to put in the consumer space but not in the enterprise," says Michael Atalla, director of product marketing for Office 365, in a dig at Google. He says that for collaboration Microsoft is more professional grade and has Google beat.

Shaw Industries, a flooring company, recently moved more than 10,000 employees to Google Apps from Lotus but keeps some people on Microsoft Office. Jim Nielsen, manager of enterprise technology architecture and planning at Shaw, says the company considered Office 365 but that the expense would have been 13 times what Google Apps would cost.

Nielsen says that employees coming to work there in their 20s found their software was "stodgy," and there was interest right away in Google. "I can get things done more quickly having collaborative documentation," he says of Google.

"They are all coming back one day - it's just a question of how long it took them to realize they made the wrong choice," says Atalla.

Google boasts more than 5 million businesses who use Apps. The company says its Apps resellers grew from 3,000 in 2011 to 6,000 in 2012. Customers span the city of Los Angeles' 17,000 employees to pharmaceutical giant Roche's 90,000.

"I think it's a deep threat but a slowly evolving one," says Austin. "The companies that move to Google engage in passive-aggressive divestiture. Many organizations find that a large portion of users have stopped using Office."

Microsoft is still by far the leader in businesses. There are at least 400 million Office users worldwide, according to IDC analyst Al Hilwa, who says at least half are business users. He estimates the war for market share between Microsoft Office and Google Apps sits at about 97% vs. 2%, respectively.

The city of Kansas City, Mo., looked at Microsoft's Office 365 cloud version vs. Google's Apps for its 4,700 employees and went with Microsoft. "When you do compare the functionality of the Office suite with Google Apps, they are getting closer all the time, but they aren't providing all the functionality of spreadsheets and all that yet. But they're going to get there eventually, I'm sure of that," says Mary Miller, chief information officer.

"Google Apps in the enterprise is still a tiny fraction of enterprises, but it is technically compelling and a strategic risk for Microsoft as the center of gravity of the market can shift from enterprise to consumer over the next few years," says Hilwa.

That might explain some of the mudslinging of negative ad campaigns, as the two tech giants battle for workplace IT departments that are growing more open to input from employees with the rise of mobile devices.

"The PR has been pretty feisty," says the Weather Company's Koehler. "The gloves will come off."